11
by twowritehands
Summary: The death beds and funerals throughout Robert's life teach him important lessons. This is a Robert-centric fic as he struggles with his various relationships and a fear of death. One or two faces from the team will make an appearance


He woke up early, just to see the golden light, brand new for the day, low through the bare trees outside his bedroom window. Antique tin soldiers, his father's and now his, were lined up on the windowsill, still alert after a night guarding against the owl shadows, treacherous beasts that adults would tell you were just the shadow of an owl, but that were from another dimension and visiting our plane of existence to hunt. They were really fast, capable of moving through glass, and sucking the lives out of little boys.

That was what Steven said anyway. But then, Uncle Peter's son was kicked out of his third boarding school just last week for being a constant liar, so Robert wasn't really inclined to believe him about owl shadows. But then, again, Steven already had a tattoo, and knew about smoking and driving and sex, so maybe he knew about other dimensions, too.

Robert kept the soldiers on steady vigil, just in case.

He opened the window, with a mind not to disturb the tidy row of his protectors. The air was crisp, easy to breath. The thudding of hooves was like a heartbeat and a horse neighed distantly. Craning his neck just a little, he could see past the house, to the distant corner of the barn and the coral there, where the new mustang was enjoying the cold morning air.

The bedroom door behind him opened abruptly, startled Robert so that he jerked, and his elbow decimated the window army. He whirled around to find Uncle Peter, plaid pajamas under a robe, surprised to see him out of bed. He got to his feet, "Morning, Uncle Pet—"

"Robert," the man cut in, breathless. Only then did he realize how Uncle Peter was standing, not strongly on feet planted shoulder width apart. He was all but leaning on the door jam, kind of just hanging between it and the door. He let go of the doorknob and held out a thick, shaking hand for Robert; weird. "Come on, she's awake and wants to see you—hurry."

Robert gasped, sprinted from the room, barreling past Uncle Peter with a sharp elbow in the man's gut. He turned left at the end of the hall, bounded up the stairs to the bedroom adjacent to the master bedroom. He was smiling, breathless and eager to tell her all about the new mustang—honestly, he didn't give a damn about horses, but he knew how much it would make her glow to hear about it.

They'd been telling him that Mom was sleeping and might not wake up. The first time he heard it, years ago in a hospital right after the car crash, he'd believed it for what it sounded like: that she would just keep sleeping for a really long time. Now, a heart transplant, a liver transplant and two more operations that-he-couldn't-remember-what-were-for later, he knew that it was all just the way grown-ups told babies about dying.

The owl shadows hadn't started to plague him until after he understood about death.

The car crash messed up a lot of things inside of Mom, they said. They were doing their best to fix the things that kept going wrong. This time it was something about an infection, a fever. For days they'd been saying it again, that she was asleep and might not wake up.

So he was happy to hear that Mom was awake. He ran as fast as he could through the house. He nearly collided with a crying woman, dunked under the arms of Uncle Michael which had attempted to snare him up with a sharp, Irish, "Robbie, no!"

The door was mostly closed, but not quite. He ran right through it, letting it slam into the wall behind it. His socks slid on the polish wood floor and he nearly fell before finding purchase on the rug. "Mom, you feel better!"

His shout met a heavy atmosphere that swallowed it whole, sucked it dry. He might as well have charged headfirst into quick-drying cement. Dad was collapsed on the window, looking out over the lake. His head was in his folded arms like he was asleep in class. On the bed, Mom was asleep again.

No. She wasn't moving. Not even a little bit.

Uncle Michael caught him, then, hauled him back out into the hallway just as Uncle Peter caught up.

"Too late," Uncle Michael choked. He was a real uncle, mom's brother, not just a close friend of Dad's, like Uncle Peter. He knelt in front of Robert, a painful grip on his elbows that was cutting off circulation and making the boy's pinkies feel tingly. Michael had mom's eyes and Robert had them, too.

"She asked for you, Robbie, but she couldn't hold on—" the Irishman broke off, stood abruptly and walked away. Uncle Peter sagged into a decorative chair and didn't make eye contact. Robert turned back to the bedroom door. It was wide open. Dad had straightened from the window, was standing with his feet planted firmly, his arms crossed resolutely. He was staring. Just staring. At the lake.

"Dad?" Robert asked. He was afraid to look at the bed.

Dad's shoulder twitched, in the way that someone might do upon hearing nails on a chalk board or a dentist's drill when all they want is silence. "Daddy, I—" he began. Dad turned, looking wild with red, red, eyes. He charged Robert, herded the small-framed boy back out into the hall, slammed the door in his face.

Uncle Peter stood. He still wasn't looking at him. He tied his robe and cleared his throat, "Let's go for a walk, Robert."

Robert's eyes blurred and heat flared in his face and he didn't want that goddamn door to be closed, but it was, and honestly, opening it again never crossed his mind. Dad wanted it closed. So it would stay closed.

Dad didn't want him. So Dad didn't have him.

Robert ignored his fake uncle, turned and fled back to his room, slammed the door, threw things around until most of it was broken. Then he grabbed up his blankets and went to his closet. There were shelves all the way around the closet walls, shelves filled with toys, brightly colored boxes of games. Sitting heavy things on the corners of the blankets and positioning a hockey-stick wedged in a rain boot in the middle to support the sagging part, he made a tent, and he sat in it.

He started talking even though he was alone. He told Mom about the new mustang anyway.

…...

It was a huge graveyard that covered three hills, from what Robert could tell. They were on top of one, in a section fenced off from the rest by wrought iron that was shaped like angels. A plaque on the gate said Fischer. Inside there were none of those boring slab-like headstones. There were statues, instead: angles, birds, a soldier, even a lion.

Robert liked the lion. He was almost as big as Kieta, their golden retriever. His mane was carved with the detail of shaggy hair. His tail was long, looping down to the ground like a jumping rope and flicking up at the end with the vitality of life. His teeth were pointed. He looked like he was smiling while he roared. Robert would have stayed next to this lion the whole time if he could have.

Some of the graves were in the ground, but some weren't. Some were giant stone boxes, tombs. Carved on the face of them were words about the bodies in them. Mom had a stone box of white marble. She should have had an angel statues on it—no, a mustang. Her box was covered in roses, red-red, like the eye of an owl shadow would have if you dared look one in the eye. The leaves of the roses were a deep-deep green, different from granny apple green like an old blood stain is different from a new one. Robert had always liked that shade of green. It was strong.

It was windy. Everyone had scarves. The air was easy to breath. The marble was ice under his hand. Uncle Michael was crying very openly over there with mom's side of the family. It was embarrassing, except Robert wanted to cry like that, too. He wasn't, though. Dad wasn't. Uncle Peter wasn't. Steven wasn't. So he wouldn't. He would stand stony-faced and half-dead looking like they were, like everyone on this side of the family was.

As he turned from the box holding Mom to return to the side of his father among the crowd of mourners, Robert saw the look Uncle Peter gave Dad, the physical nudge of an elbow that followed it. The moment Robert was at his side, Dad's hand was on his shoulder, but only briefly. His voice was very thin on the cold air, "Robert. There's—nothing to be said."

**25 Years Later**

The light of day was sliced up by the wooden blinds on the windows and standing in the stripes of darkness and light, Robert listened to his father struggle for breath in the death bed behind him. Death was coming to the Fischer family again. Another funeral. Robert felt like swearing. Once was enough— how bad would it look if he didn't go to Maurice's funeral?

How badly would it hurt?

Robert stood with his hands in his pockets, so lost in thought that he could no longer make out the muffled voices of businessmen outside the room. At first, he'd been following them and their business, an unofficial member of the meeting. But he'd lost himself to his thoughts. Those low tones and Maurice's wheezing were the only noises in the room, and right now he was focusing on the second. What if the breathing just stopped?

All at once, there would be nothing but the closed-away voices. All at once, Robert would be alone in this room. He would turn from this window and for the second time in his life, look at a dead body in a bed, a parent.

Horribly, his brief imagining of Maurice's end hurt. His chest tightened and his eyes burned. It was going to happen soon, no doubt about it, and yet he still couldn't bring himself to accept it. Robert felt simultaneously weak and selfish for wanting Maurice's breaths to continue struggling one after the other, for needing the man to live even though he was in pain and better off dead.

The wait was like the wait for a signal to start a race. But different because Robert's wait now wasn't for something given, as a whistle blast is given, but for something not given; his was a wait for the deprivation of something. He was waiting for missed beats in a familiar rhythm to lead to more missed beats, to become silence, and in that silence, the inheritance of a fortune. It was strange to wait for nothing to come instead of something.

He came here, to Sydney, once every two weeks to wait like this. He was supposed to be visiting, talking, reminiscing, saying goodbye. Waiting was all that ever happened, though. There was nothing but business to talk about between them, and all of that business had been taken care of already. As for wishy-washy emotional crap, feelings and wishes and tears, those were for girls and horses.

Sudden rasping behind him made Robert turn from the morning light of the window. Maurice had roused himself, was trying to speak. He moved his hands in frantic gestures, panicked that he couldn't get the words out. Robert was by the bedside before he knew it, eager to help but helpless. Weak. "What?"

Maurice grabbed him the moment he was in reach, his grip was surprisingly strong. Robert was astonished to find himself pulled down close. The gasping was horrible; dry, scratching, leaves over pavement, exactly what one expected the grim reaper to sound like when he said your name on the roll call.

Or owl shadows.

Robert hadn't thought about those in years, but when he met Maurice's eye and found fear there, those dark and deadly monsters of his childhood were the first to swoop to mind, red eyes blazing. Their wings would rustle when they folded them, brittle feathers making this dry scrapping sound emanating form Maurice's throat now.

Inexplicably, Robert was absolutely certain that Maurice knew he was about to die. Fear, a reflection of what Robert saw in the dying man's eye, made his skin prickle, and everything else tightened his chest and made his eyes sting. Hate him or not, you only have one dad. One chance. And this, right now, was Robert's chance, ending.

And the last thing said between them had only one discernible word in it, a word that raked right through whatever armor Robert had built through the years. It left him raw, ragged, wanting, and breathless as he watched Maurice exhale for the last time and fall limp on the bed. Gone.

Disappointed.

…...

Robert hadn't returned to this place in twenty five years. It felt different. The statues seemed smaller, and there were no flowers on Mom's tomb. With her family living in Ireland, there was no one around to bother with that kind of thing. Robert might have adorned her grave with wreaths regularly, except that sentimentality was not becoming of a Fischer; it showed weakness.

Dad's tomb was next to Mom's, matching in cut and color, and today was surrounded by wreathes of yellow and white flowers and pictures of him as a younger man. Extended family, friends, and business men made the crowd, dry eyes all around. Steven didn't even show up, even though Robert knew for a fact he was in LA.

This wasn't the funeral of a beloved woman taken too soon, a 30 year old horse trainer who still had lots of things she wanted to do in the world, who was leaving behind a child who still needed her. This was the funeral of a very successful man, a leader in today's corporate world, a 70 year old billionaire who lived his life, leaving behind a man who publically defied him more often than not.

The press was here, standing a little ways away, outside the fence.

Robert stepped forward when it was time, approached the graves of his parents, and placed the first flower on the white stone, a single white rose. A thorn cut his thumb. He pinched it, not letting blood drip onto the tombstone. He stood there a moment, staring down at the words identifying his father that were followed by some kind of meaningful epitaph, and the company insignia, familiar from thousands of letterheads and checks and signs and elevator floors and badges.

The tip of Robert's thumb was white and numb from pressing it into the knuckle of his forefinger. He stood at the grave, giving respects, saying goodbye, but actually just cursing rose thorns and fighting the urge to put the cut pad of his thumb into his mouth. Sucking his thumb at his dad's funeral would literally make Maurice turn over in his grave; Robert had no doubts about it.

He returned to his place in the crowd, next to Uncle Peter who was very red in the eyes with his lips pursed together. Robert knew this without looking, sensed it in the way the older man was breathing. He wouldn't look, though. He was going to be stony-faced and half-dead looking, and if he looked at his godfather, he might feel something.

He wasn't going to cry now when he didn't cry then.

Now, he was going to focus on applying pressure until the cut on his finger clotted. His hands were sweaty in the heat and when his thumb slipped around on his knuckle, salty sweat stung when it made contact with the wound. He had a handkerchief. He wasn't going to bring it out. He wasn't going to let reporters get a picture of him holding a handkerchief at his father's funeral. He didn't know why that was important; it just was.

Kind of like how, for the past twenty years, he'd made sure never to actually call his father anything but Maurice. The word Dad stayed here with red roses and cold wind; consciously left here after meaningless words were given for comfort when real ones were needed the most. He left it here, still, after the funeral was over and the only words given were cookie-cutter condolences and the only thing needed was a band aid.

He walked calmly back to the car, climbed into the sun heated back seat, cooled by an air conditioner turned on in advance. The driver, well trained, shut the door softly behind him and quickly put it in drive, though traffic was jammed in the small lot. Through the tinted glass, the dark shapes of mourners moved like blobs with legs through the grass, weaving among the stone angels and soldiers and crypts. It took several moments after his eye fell on the shape to recognize what he was looking at. A stone shaped like a proud lion roaring.

"Hold on, will you?" the words were out before Robert knew what for, lacked the usual power with which he spoke to the help, a habit he picked up from somewhere already shaking loose. The driver's head moved, and disinterested eyes flicked to him in the mirror, then the transmission shifted, and the car parked once more. Eyes still on that lion, Robert waved a hand vaguely, "Shut it off. I need a minute."

"Yes sir," was the prompt reply, and the car died. Robert climbed back out. The graveyard was clear now. Most of the cars were in line, rumbling away over the gravely pavement. Robert walked with his hands in his pockets to the stone lion where it sat out of the beaten path in the cool shade, its face turned to the east, away from his parents' graves.

It was so much smaller than he remembered. Plainer, too—he could have sworn its mane was bigger than that, more detailed than just a few shaggy locks, and the mouth—where was the smile? Robert saw now only a hungry beast with a ferocious scream; funny how the mind could misremember like that, skewed by innocent interpretation. Or by adult blindness. Was the lion changed or Robert? He knew the answer, but didn't know how to change it.

Or maybe he did.

It was a matter of meeting someone he'd lost: the young boy who'd stood fighting tears on the worst winter day of his life, watching that strong, happy lion celebrating something, but what? Certainly not death. He'd been too young to get the message, had let it fade from memory, nothing but a cool cat in a garden of faces. But he was back, and he got it now. There was a smile. It was a triumphant roar, happily celebrating a life lived, not stolen like Mom's, not wasted, like Robert's.

What had he been chasing all these years? What had he been trying to prove? That he was worthy of his father's attention? That he belonged in the Fischer house, instead of Ireland where Uncle Michael had wanted to take him, where he'd have had to share a room with cousins he didn't know and probably wouldn't like, where he'd have had to go to public school? Where he'd have been in a family that showed affection, that was warm, that had his eyes...

Where he would have become a teacher or something, lived in an apartment, met women who had no earthly idea who he was or what he did. It would have been something to talk about on dates, and his job—probably history professor—would be more interesting than energy trade, and she would listen, and then he'd listen as she talked about her job, because she'd have one, she wouldn't be some rich debutant living on daddy's cards. He'd be stuck in an okay life, dreaming of something bigger. He'd be like everyone else.

He'd belong somewhere, and thus, be happy.

Robert returned to the car, brain turning every clog, all pistons firing. He had a job to do, and simply it was not Maurice's. He opened the door himself and climbed in, slammed the door behind him. First thing was first, though. "Take me down town please."

"Anywhere _specific_?" the driver asked. Robert prickled at the attitude, but gave his destination, the funeral home to talk to whoever was in charge of the headstones. It was time Mom's memory was properly honored. How long would it take them to sculpt from a picture of her beloved mustang, anyway?

**4 Years Later**

Soft light crept into the dark bedroom from the hallway, where Robert kept a dim light on for trips to the bathroom, and _not_ because of owl shadows, but she liked to tease him about that ever since he told her about them. It was all good fun; he'd just tease her right back about her childhood monster Bobo, which sounded more like a purple dinosaur than an embodiment of fear. Owl shadows, at least, were worthy adversaries.

"I can't sleep," she said with a sigh, rolling into him. "I'm too excited."

Robert just made a noise in the back of his throat and began to stroke evenly spaced lines down her back. She needed it to fall asleep, and he wanted her to sleep. He didn't want to talk about this right now, he needed to think. But she had never let him avoid this stuff, the serious emotional stuff. Kind of like the way Mom was; fearless when it came to the big stuff folded up inside people—and some kind of natural expert on the intricate trappings of a Fischer.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said. (It _would_ be just his luck that he'd fall in love precisely when his life was in the chaos of transition. Destroying his inheritance turned everything upside down and inside out and in the middle of it, he got married. As if that hadn't been enough to deal with, now _this_ was happening.) He wasn't bitter or ungrateful, he was just overwhelmed. How could it be that when his life had been so ordered and in control, it had been miserable, and now that life was such an ever-changing mess, it was so-_good_?

"I know it's going to be a big change," she replied, "but I think you'll do great."

He expelled a pent up breath. "I don't know."

She squeezed him comfortingly; just what he needed. "Lighten up on yourself, Robbie. You'll be a wonderful father."

His hand went to her stomach, the new bump there. He didn't put the fear tossing around inside of him into words, that would give them power, life. His lungs pulled a hungry breath through his nose, and his lips smacked. "But what if—"

"No What Ifs," she cut in firmly, "You're already a father one hundred times better than Maurice."

He snorted, "Yeah?"

"Trust me,"

"But..." he sighed, searched for words. Her soft lips pressed into his neck encouragingly. Here in the dark with her like now was the only way he could unfold like this. "I don't know, it's like...I've made all these grand gestures, but that's all it is. I'm doing these things because I know I should. I don't..._feel_ anything..."

She was quiet for a long time. Robert lay perfectly still, anxious for any kind of reaction—anything at all besides this blank pause. His wife having nothing to say equaled bad news, equaled discord, equaled him giving her the latest good reason to abandon a sinking ship.

"You will. I know you will. It's just not close enough yet. Give yourself time. Meet the little guy. Then assess your feelings, and, whatever they are, never _not_ talk about them."

He laughed dryly, "Easier said than done. It'll be easy until he can talk and think for himself, and then it'll just be awkward, and then before you know it, I'll be wheezing through an oxygen mask, trying to tell him something man-to-man for the first time, and I can't even talk enough to say it, and then I die, and then he's as lost as I am."

"Listen, I don't care if you have to sit the kid down in a dark room to talk, you have to do it, and I know you will. And I also know it won't ever come to that. The kid will have a little bit of me in it too, you know."

Robert chortled, "God. I'll have to go to Antarctica to get two minutes of silence."

She jabbed him in the ribs. He flinched violently; ticklish. They squeezed each other close, reminded by the bump that they didn't have many more quiet nights like this to themselves. Robert's eyelids drooped in temporary contentment, the turmoil of an over neurotic brain settled for the moment.

Her light hum broke the silence. "Do you know something you've never told me?"

Robert thought about it. "This is a trick question."

She giggled. "No, it's not. I was just thinking...you told me the stories of how they died, and the last thing he ever said to you and all, but I don't know the last thing your mom ever said to you."

What a thought. Robert blinked. Had he really never told her? They just didn't talk about it as much as Maurice's dying words. Honestly, Robert even needed a minute to think about the answer. He made a point never to think about the past. But, his wife made a point of knowing these kind of things about him.

His mother had asked for him, had had something important to say, but he'd missed it. With a drop, Robert began to say that he didn't know what his mother's final words were, but then he remembered the question. Not her last words in life, but her last words to him.

He drew in a slow, steady breath, and his Irish accent was rusty, but he pulled off the impression. "She said, 'have a good day at school. Don't trade your carrots for gummy bears again, and I'll see you later. Love ya."

"Hmmm," she said, rolling over him in a way that killed the heavy atmosphere brought on by his trip down memory lane. She held her weight off the baby bump with her knees on either side of his hips and her long straight hair brushed his chest, "I love you with that accent."

"Oh, do you, now?" he asked, really getting a feel for the cheery leprechaun thing. Giggling, she kissed him so that he could feel her nod in the dark. She squealed when he caught her by the upper thighs and pushed his hips up just right into her super-sensitive-pregnant parts.

His anxieties about work and marriage and the baby and owl shadows fell away-and then the phone rang, luminous screen lighting up the whole room with a sherbet glow like fake firelight. It was a sudden, harsh trill sound that startled them both right out of the mood and effectively pissed Robert off. He went to an elbow and snatched it up, noting the time to be well past midnight and his anger righteous for it. "What?"

A sniff answered him and then Nathan, Peter's young secretary and latest reason to stay late at the office, said, "It's Peter-He-," he young man broke down.

"What happened?" Robert demanded.

Nathan's answer was a whine, high in the back of his throat, "He killed himself!"

…...

The Browning plot was one hill over from the fenced Fischer plot. Robert and Becca stopped there first, a quick visit to pay respects to his parents. Violets were growing in a thick band from the base of Mom's tomb over to Dad's. Her mustang was pawing the ground, head tossed high and mane caught in the wind. Today, white lilies lay fresh at the horse's hooves. And on the Fischer-Morrow company logo as well.

His first instinct had been to leave flowers only for Mom, but just by holding his hand in silence, Becca was teaching him to be better than that. It was better to forgive and forget. _He was still you're dad, Robert, for Christ's sake. _The better part of him, the part that was melding itself to her, said. _Maybe all he ever wanted in life was for you to be yourself. You'll never know will you, though, for all the talking you did._

Peter and his wife chose to go in the ground with flagstone headstones. The crowd was gathered around a black casket suspended above an open grave. Red roses were everywhere. Birds kept singing from the trees, singing of new life like one hadn't been dramatically shortened. Robert's stomach tightened sickeningly at the thought of what Peter did to himself.

What did it mean for him now? Was there really some kind of cosmic rule against it? Or maybe it made no real difference how someone stops living because no one ever goes anywhere. They just stop existing. Robert flinched at that thought and his stomach rolled. If that was true for Peter, then it was true for Mom and Dad, too.

God, Robert hated funerals.

The media was here for this, held at bay outside the graveyard entrance by security. There was perhaps even more of a crowd than when Dad died. It was shocking news, the bloody suicide of a fallen corporate leader. Even more shocking was why. (He lost a four year battle with himself to keep going without him, his best friend, the unrequited love of his life, the man resting in peace in the shadow of a mustang, white lilies on his grave.)

If Fischer-Morrow hadn't been dissolved, keeping this under the rug would have been settled before breakfast. But Robert gave up that power for freedom, and now cameras flashed from the other side of the fence.

How exactly word of this got out was a mystery, but Robert had his suspicions. They'd let him and Peter's estranged son, Steven, see the suicide note (it was addressed officially to them both) and it was just like Steven, to hand a copy over to the highest bidder. It was even more like Steven to have the gall to show up late for his father's wake.

Robert's almost-cousin stood between the graves of his parents, facing his father's coffin with a stony expression. His dark hair was slicked back, eyebrows low over dark eyes that were crinkled in the corners. His suit was a three piece, black over a black shirt with a black tie. Robert strode over to him before the service began.

"How much did they pay you for the story?"

Steven's eyes snapped to him and he grinned. It came out a grimace, with a dimple showing up in his cheek anyway, "What's it to you?" his lips barely moved as he asked, voice low and expertly hiding the grief in his eyes.

Robert motioned to the media, "Maybe he could have been put to rest and remembered with some dignity! He deserves _that_ much don't you think?"

Steven snorted, "You might have been the son he wanted, Robert, but don't go thinking you know what he deserves." He jutted a chin at the shiny casket, "He knew what he had coming to him. Finally, we were on the same page about something: a bullet to the brain. I sort of love him for it."

"Jesus Christ!" Robert cried and Becca stepped between them to prevent a scene from exploding. Robert pressed a hand over his mouth, swallowing shouts of outrage. His voice was strained, "You could at least _try_ to be human about this!"

He smirked condescendingly, "Human? It _is_ human, to congratulate the man who killed your mother for taking the punishment he deserved into his own hands."

Becca swooped in then, speaking for Robert, since she knew the whole story, "Okay, it was shitty of him to marry an innocent girl that he'd never pay attention to in order to hide his insecurities, but it's _just_ as shitty of you to tell the world about it now, right?"

Steven's dark eyes glittered, "An innocent girl he would never paid attention to? Is that how sweet Robbie told you it happened?"

"You're bitter," Robert warned, "This isn't the place for it."

"I'm not bitter," Steven said with a shrug, "I'm honest. Peter ignored her straight into a noose." He scoffed and looked over at his mother's grave. "I found her. Five years old."

"I'm sorry that happened, Steven," Robert said.

Steven double-looked him, his grief stricken eyes swept all over Robert's face as if he needed to redefine what he saw. He smirked, and shook his head "You're the only one left now who's ever called me that."

Robert swallowed, stunned. He stiffly shrugged a shoulder. "It's your name…."

"From your side, yeah, I guess it is," Steven mused, that dimpled grimace back. Robert, for the first time, perhaps in his life, considered his almost-cousin's life outside of the few dysfunctional family functions he occasionally deemed worthy of his presence; the messy life he'd dared to make for his self while his father still drew breath.

Robert knew nothing of it expect that it was overall dishonorable, mostly illegal, and exactly the lifestyle neither of their father's approved of. They'd grown up together, but then Steven left when he graduated high school, and Robert hadn't really seen as much of him as heard rants about him from Peter and Maurice since.

"I could…" Robert muttered uncertainly, "I mean, if you prefer a different name-" Steven cut him off there with a tight shake of his head. "No don't. Please. Steven's…. fine. It's what my family calls me."

Robert nodded, suddenly feeling like he had a brother and not just an almost-cousin, and the subject changed. With a heavy sigh, Steven released one fist from his pocket to drop it on Robert's higher shoulder and then nodded toward the seats, which were filling up fast with mourners.

They had just settled down in the front row when Steven's steady breathing suddenly reversed, and Robert sensed his body tense in surprise. Following the man's line of sight, Robert spotted a woman he'd never seen before in his life as she entered the gate. She was tiny, wore a black dress and had a silk grey scarf tied around her neck; her wavy brown hair was in her face, which was already puffy like she'd been crying.

Before Robert could ask, Steven was out of his chair and moving toward her. Robert traded a glance with Becca and took her hand silently as they watched Steven speak only a few words to the short woman before wrapping his arms tightly around her. The sight of it made Robert smile. It reminded him of coming home.

He squeezed Becca's hand and the both of them nodded polite, solemn greetings to the stranger when she took the seat to Steven's right as the ceremony began. Half way through, Robert's chest tightened painfully, and he had to hold on more tightly to Becca. To his left, Steven pushed a thumb into the corner of his eye and sniffed. Behind the gate, cameras flickered and clicked like a swarm.

As the clergyman read on from the book with a powerful, carrying voice, Steven grew more and more restless, until he finally just stood mid-prayer and made a hasty dash for the gate, shaking his head. The crowd was stirred out of their reflective calm, and whispers swept all around. The woman in the scarf sprang up after him, calling, "Arthur!"

She caught him in a decorative archway, controlled him easily despite her size. The clergyman carried on, but Robert's eye was trained on the couple. From hand gestures alone, he understood that she was gently prompting him back to his seat, and he was refusing on principle-the stubborn bastard-and after only a minute, she gave up and began to walk arm in arm with him to the car.

Robert dunked out of the ceremony and gave chase. "Steven!" he shouted, catching the iron bars in the gate as it clacked shut loudly under the turmoil of reporters swarming the couple. Hired security held the hounds off, and Robert reached through to grab his shoulder. "You can't just leave in the middle-"

"Sure I can," Steven said.

"You should say goodbye."

"I just did."

"Properly."

He snorted and rolled his eyes. Somewhere between the archway and the gate, he'd won back perfect control over his face-the grief in his eyes was even effectively cloaked now. Robert clenched his jaw and felt his nostrils flare around hot air. Right now he just felt like strangling the guy-why did he have to make everything so difficult?

He glanced at the woman, and found that she was looking intently at him in that same redefining way. Robert got the intense feeling that he wasn't being who she'd expected, probably _Arthur_'s pampered, favored, little cousin Robbie. The truth was, neither of them knew one other well enough to tell anyone about each other and get it right, and unless Robert stopped him now, they never would. Without Uncle Peter, there was no reason for Steven to ever return.

The thought seemed to occur to him at the exact same moment. He straightened suddenly, releasing the scarfed lady, to extend a hand through the bars for a handshake. "Robert, you've turned into a…pretty decent guy."

Robert laughed. "If I knew the secret, I'd tell you."

The woman giggled and looked away. Steven looked at the ground, tongue in his cheek, and nodded. "Well, hey, maybe if you become a billionaire again, I'll come back around."

Robert shook his head. "No time for that. I'm," he stopped, suddenly at a slight loss for words and breath. He shook his head. "I'm going to be a dad."

Steven's eyes widened and he looked past Robert at Becca. The bump had been concealed beneath the slimming color of her dress. He laughed, smiling genuinely and gaining more than a few extra dimples. "That's…great, man. Congratulations." He clapped Robert on the bicep. "Maybe I'll come around more, then. Looks like every Fischer needs a Browning, anyway."

Robert smiled. "That'd be…" he shrugged, "good. We'd like that."

"Yeah, then I will," he said. After a moment, when his eye had strayed back to the crowd and the blood red roses there, the dimples wore off, and his throat pulsed. He looked away, stepped back. "I'm gonna go…"

"You're really just going to leave me to bury his memory without you?"

Steven snorted and looked at him from under a deeply wrinkled brow. "I'm leaving you to bury a _body_, not a memory. I'm gonna have a shade of him in my mind for the rest of my life."

Robert balked. A shade. He'd never heard the dead called that before. Steven and his mysterious little woman disappeared, and Robert was left blinking as if dazzled by a bright light. A _shade_-like a shadow. An owl shadow. A thought occurred to him as he made his way back to his seat.

Maybe owl shadows, the nighttime plague of his youth, weren't evil creatures at all. Maybe they were only as scary as they were painful, and their only intention all along was to connect the dead with the living. Maybe they were just carriers of memories of the dead, shades.

It felt as if the world turned by the slightest degree and dropped snuggly into place right where it was supposed to be all along. Anxiety fell away. Fear for Uncle Peter (for Mom, and Dad) fell away. His chest felt lighter as he took his seat next to his growing family and let the new thought roll around in his head.

It was _okay_ to remember the dead.

….

**11 Years Later**

Vincent knew something was wrong. Robert wished he could make some kind of reassurance, but his throat was too tight for that. Vincent's throat was probably tight, too, because for the first time since his first word ("No!") he was being quiet. His mom had been doing a lot of screaming last he saw her, so Robert didn't blame him.

Thier son looked a lot like Robert, but had Becca's red hair. At eleven, he was currently in a horribly awkward phase where his ears and chin were too big for his body. Boney, filled with too much energy, growing two inches every time you looked away, he was beautiful.

Robert had taken a seat next to the boy in the hospital waiting room chairs to stop his pacing. He didn't want to worry him. As a distraction, he joined him in playing with the tin soldier set, Vincent's latest birthday present. "These things are really old, you know," he said. "They were my dad's when he was your age."

"They're cool," Vincent mumbled thickly, holding a civil war general up for close inspection. Robert missed whatever he said next, because fast moving nurses at the end of the hall caught his eye. His stomach turned. Jesus Christ, what was happening?

"Dad?" Vincent asked.

"Yeah?" Robert snapped out of it, forced a smile. Vincent's blue eyes were wide with worry and Robert failed to mask his own. "Isn't the dad supposed to be in the delivery room with the mom?"

"Well," Robert lied tightly, "I wanted to wait out here with the big brother."

"You wanted to go with her, but they wouldn't let you," Vincent corrected, ever his mother's child. Robert refrained from rolling his eyes, sighed,

"They don't need me in the way while they figure out why he's coming so early," he said, fiddling with the soldiers on the chair arm between them. "They'll let us know any minute."

"This is going to be like last time, isn't it?" Vincent asked.

Robert drew in sudden breath, but couldn't lie. "Maybe," he answered. They might lose this one, too. But this time might be worse. They might lose _her_. There was a big difference between first and second trimesters. Robert didn't know if Vincent understood that or not, and he had no idea where to start in finding out if he did.

Looking down an empty hallway, Robert repressed the urge to swear, to scream at hard working hospital staff, demanding an answer. His stomach was a hot knot of worry and trepidation, his heart one word on repeat (_please, please, please, please_), and his mind trying to race with worst case scenarios only to shut down with a wrench in the clogs (_No_)_. _

Vincent and the soldiers were his focus, a blanket to mute the worry.

"Mr. Fischer?"

Robert stood, whirled to face the doctor, and fell into a place where voices were far away, and a high ringing was in his ears, because that disgusting knot of foreboding in his stomach welled up and consumed him. The doctor's face said it all before his lips formed the shapes. Robert lost his breath, his heart, and what tiny bits of faith he'd manage to scrap together over this last tumultuous decade of his life.

Hot tears in his eyes, muscles in his face contorting grotesquely against his control, he defied whatever it was that made things happen, that made cars flip and babies come too soon. "No," he breathed.

_This can't happen to us_. His fingers popped when he balled them into fists. His jaw hurt for being clenched. The doctor was the first to give condolences and then he was gone. And Robert was lost in pain and anger and questions. Why? Why did the people he loved most in the world have to be taken from him?

He felt lightheaded and outraged and sick and lost. He stood unmoving in the waiting room, breaking. Then a little hand was in his, tugging on it for attention, "Dad?"

Breath exploded out of Robert, a strangled cry, and he turned away from his son, covering his face and the weakness there. His knees gave out and he folded down onto them on the tile floor. Just then, a body came hurling around the corner at the end of the hall.

"Rob!" It was Becca's mother, checked her messages too late. Robert didn't hear his name or anything said between his mother-in-law and Vincent. He didn't hear anything but the last thing Becca said to him, panting in pain, and scared: _Promise me it'll be okay. We'll have the family we always wanted._

He'd promised.

…...

The mustang was king of the graveyard and knew it, standing proudly among the statues. Yellow leaves swirled through the air, an immense flock of weird shaped birds-or a plague of alien insects. The crowd was weeping, feeling as wretched as Robert. The sky was open and bright, what Becca would have called Robert's-eyes-blue, like she had on their second date.

Robert was sick of it, all of it-_the world_. He didn't want it if she couldn't have it. He was tired. He felt _old_. Last week he'd have said he felt like he was thirty in all of his fifty one years, but now, he felt suddenly aged to a hundred.

Both of his parents, an uncle, now a wife and son; this goddamn graveyard had seen too much of Robert. He wasn't seeing it today. Not really. There were shapes all around him that he knew but didn't care about. Vincent. Vincent was all Robert could think about.

What the hell was he supposed to say to Vincent?

_Robert, there's-nothing to be said._

Profoundly and about forty years too late, Robert understood. Dad must have been this lost, this scared and unprepared. He must have felt this, that there was too much to say, too much to convey, nowhere to begin. So he had copped out. It was that simple. Maurice had shrugged off the responsibility of explaining the hard parts of life to a little boy not ready to hear them, but in desperate need of them.

Robert knew because he knew what Vincent was feeling. Jesus Christ, he'd been in the boy's shoes forty years ago and now here he was in Maurice's. Was this a sick joke?

No. Somehow, Robert didn't think so. Somehow, he felt like he understood why tragedy befell the Fischer house forty years ago. Why he had to lose a loving mother so soon. Because of this, right now. He lost her then, so that he could have the answers Vincent needed now.

But where in the hell was he supposed to start?

Vincent stuck by Robert's side, clutching his hand, shying away from people for the first time in his life. He kept his eyes down and only answered in nods or shakes of the head. In fact, Robert was sure he hadn't heard a word out of him since the hospital. Right now he wasn't watching the white coffin sink into the ground at the end of the ceremony, but at the crushed red and yellow leaves at his feet.

Becca's mother and brother were leaning on each other. and her cousins were dabbing their eyes as they headed for their cars. Robert's side of the family was only Steven, same three piece suit, grey hair swept back, beard peppered with color, and dark eyes crinkled permanently as he approached sixty. He embraced Robert tightly, grunted his condolences, and then he bled back into the crowd of faceless people around him, leaving.

Robert and Vincent stayed put at the graveside, both shaking their heads when Becca's mother tried to invite them to her house; shaking their heads when she tried to insist they should get out of the chilled air. They stayed by the grave and watched as it was filled in with dirt. They stayed after all the cars but theirs was gone, even the gravedigger's.

They didn't speak for the longest time. Cool autumn wind brushed against their teary faces and the air filled with swirling, fly-away leaves with every gust. Then, Robert cleared his throat ad began in the only place he knew where,

"I lost my mom when I was your age," he said.

Vincent said nothing. Robert turned to him, knelt to put their matching eyes on level. His chest hurt and his throat closed and he very nearly left it at that. But, no. That wouldn't do. Becca had promised he'd be a better father. She knew he could be. Somehow, she knew he had it in him. He had to find it. And be it.

"Things are going to be very different from now on," he continued tightly, and gasped at the sight of fresh tears on his son's face. He drew him in for a tight hug, "We're going to miss her so much it hurts." He pressed a hand to Vincent's thin chest and felt the heartbeat, "Hurts like it does now. But, but we can't let that stop us from remembering her, okay?"

Vincent nodded and Robert released him, led him back over to the white chairs they'd sat in for the ceremony. Sitting down, he sniffed and drew in a deep breath to steady himself. It hurt-_God, it hurt_-to think of it now, but it would never hurt to remember as much as it did right now. He cleared his throat and, through tears he didn't even try to stop, he told the story of how he and Becca met.

Two years into changing absolutely everything about himself, he'd started the teaching job he had now as a business strategy professor and right in the front row was a red headed girl who wouldn't stop asking question about the end of Fischer Morrow. She couldn't understand why someone would destroy a billion dollar company to turn to teaching. She wouldn't shut up about it, and he'd ended up spending the whole class arguing with her…

His laughter bled into tears and it took several long moments for him to regain control of himself. Vincent threw his arms around him and he happily accepted the embrace for a moment, but then he pulled away, clearing his throat. He kept going, now with a random story about the time he and Becca had stayed with her parents, which had led to a minor house fire...

His throat was tight and he was leaking tears and snot, but he needed to keep going, to talk, for his son, because there was _everything_ to be said.

**fin.**

_AN: if you leave lotsa reviews, then Arthur get's a spin-off fic here! Don't leave yourself wondering why he did the Inception, or why Ariadne wasn't standing next to 60 year old Arthur..._

**_Click the pretty Robert's-eyes-blue button!_**


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